


Always keep fighting

by morecuddlzpleaz



Category: Supernatural
Genre: If You Squint - Freeform, Illness, In honor of Jared's TWLOHA campaign, M/M, Mental Illness, Sam!centric, Sastiel - Freeform, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, big brother! Dean, depression fic, h/c, sick!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3707887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morecuddlzpleaz/pseuds/morecuddlzpleaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is left alone in the bunker for an extended period of time and starts spiraling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always keep fighting

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this started a few months ago, at the beginning of the semester to be exact, and has been sitting in pieces on my laptop, iPad, and notebook. I even have most of Dean's pov written out b/c I didn't know how to do the ending for a while there. Anyway, the finished product was in honor of receiving my Always Keep Fighting shirt and sweatshirt in the mail. Enjoy!

Sam hasn't been left alone this long since he was a kid. He had been sick when Dean had gotten the call for the case, apparently there was no one else in the area, so Dean felt obligated to take it. Sam had tried to come along, it was only a cold after all, but Cas and Dean assured him that they could take care of it, that he should stay home and rest. That was two weeks ago. Sam had called them wanting to meet up as soon as he stopped sneezing every five minutes, but they assured him that while it was taking longer than expected, they didn't need his help on this one, that he should continue to rest up. Sam had agreed reluctantly, figuring that it might be nice to have some alone time.

Sam had always had the occasional bad day. Later in his adolescence they got more frequent. Days where he wouldn't want to get out if bed, wouldn't eat, and would barely speak. Days where his fights with his father started over the smallest things and turned nasty in the blink of an eye. John and Dean had chalked it up to teenage angst, and it had never been unmanageable, so it was never brought up, at least until Stanford.

The transition was harder than Sam had anticipated. His scholarship didn't cover books, and his meal plan only covered one meal a day. He only had two sets of clothes, and he found out very quickly that a laptop was a necessity at college, not a luxury. Sam needed a job. The only problem, was that he had no job experience, no car, and no knowledge of the area. This meant a job on campus.

Sam didn't mind really, only the school paid minimum wage, and he could only work 20 hours so to make up the difference, Sam started tutoring people. He may have been pre-law, but Sam was damn good at math. And if between his full course load and two jobs, one under the table, one not, Sam was only getting four hours of sleep, well he'd been in worse circumstances for longer.

Then break hit. Through no small amount of begging and a bit of lying, Sam was able to stay on campus over break. Sam was thankful. He hadn't managed to make any real friends over the semester, and wouldn't of had a place to go, and he was so tired, worn out, that there was no way he would be able to find a place. So he stayed. Then campus shut down.

His classes ended, the kids he tutored went home, and the office he worked in wasn't open over break. Sam spiralled. With no one to talk to, nothing to keep him busy and make him leave his dorm room, he just....stayed in bed. He stopped caring, stopped eating, and started thinking.

He thought about how fucked up he was. His failures. How he's pretty sure that he barely scraped a C in one of his classes and that's no way to keep a fucking scholarship. His thoughts progressively got darker, harsher, to the point where the gun in his side table started looking sweeter and sweeter.

It was a fluke really, that brought his roommate back early. Officially the dorms didn't open for another week, but Brady had forgotten to return a textbook, and since he lived in the area anyway, he popped over and sweet talked campus security into letting him in the dorms to grab it. Five minutes later and he'd have been too late.

He walked in on Sam sitting cross legged in the middle of their floor. His entire side of the room, meagre as it was, was packed up, there were two sealed letters on the desk, an empty bottle of Oxycontin was on the floor next to him and Sam had a gun pointed at his head. Safety off.

911 was called, Sam was taken to the hospital and stayed for observation for a few days. They gave him antidepressants, and made him see a therapist. He didn't get better overnight, but he learned to cope. He started therapy in the free clinic on campus, and learned to treat his body right. Under the guidance of his counselor, he changed his eating habits, sticking to healthy food and leaving the sugar behind. He started sleeping more, keeping a regular schedule, and he started running. He wasn't cured, but he improved.

He relapsed of course, but never was it as bad as the first time. Even when he left Stanford, left therapy, and had to deal with losing Jess, he used the techniques he learned, and while he had bad days, he took care of himself.

Which brings us to now. It wasn't as if Sam had forgotten okay? But when you're hacking up a lung, running doesn't sound that good, and he's never liked eating when he's sick, never had a stomach for food when he has snot running down the back of his throat, and from there, it's easy to just stop caring. It's easy, even after he's feeling better, to still sleep for fifteen hours, and only leave his room to pee or occasionally sit in the shower letting all his dark thoughts roam free.

Sam wasn't sure how long it had been since he left his room, he knew that he had thrown his phone at the wall at some point. It hadn't stopped ringing, and he was just so _tired _. At one point he thought he heard another phone ring, but the energy to try and find the source just wasn't there. It wasn't like it fucking mattered.__

He thought about the gun under his pillow. It wasn't the first time he had thought about it since he had shut himself in his room. The thoughts didn't go very far. Sam wasn't ready to spend eternity in hell yet. He curls tighter into a ball.

It's then that a sliver of light shines on his bead. There's a moment, just one, where whoever opened the door pauses. Holds their breathe. Sam curls impossibly tighter. There's a sigh of relief that Sam swears is his name, and all of a sudden, Dean is sitting on the edge of his bed, his hand carding through Sam's hair.

"d'n? wha y'doin?"  
"Hey Sammy, it's gonna be okay now, alright? Cas and I are home now." Dean's voice, soft and careful, as if one word would break everything.  
"Cas?"  
"Yeah bud, Cas too. He's gonna be in here soon, he was looking for you."

Sam squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn't good enough for Cas, not enough, never enough, never pure.  


"Hey now. Hey." Dean's voice gets firm, just an edge of steel that makes Sam want to both obey and retreat simultaneously. "None of that. Of course you're good enough." His voice softens again. "Can you sit up for me Sam?"

Sam furrows his brow, but haltingly sits up. He hadn't thought he was speaking. Tears start leaking from his eyes again. Sam doesn't bother finding the energy to swipe them away.

"Sam, I need you to look at me, this is important okay? I need to know if you've taken anything." His voice is firm, but Sam stares blankly at Dean not understanding why Dean was asking. Why it was important. "Sam." The edge of steel came back, with a sense of urgency this time, and slowly Sam shook his head, eyes falling back to his hands on his lap.

"Sam?" Dean's quiet sigh of relief was drowned out by Cas stepping into the room. Sam flinches away from his name, and Dean turns to address Cas in low quiet tones.

"Hey man, give us a bit? I've got'em, but could you maybe go whip us up some broth?"

"O-of c-course Dean. Let me know if you need anything, and Sam? I love you, always. I'm here for you if you need me."

Sam nodded, still facing away, and Cas leaves Sam and Dean alone again. Sam lets out a breathe he hadn't realized he was holding.

"You know he's telling the truth right? He's crazy about you. We both love you Sam."

Dean sighs when Sam doesn't respond and instead continues to stare at his hands. "Alright Sam, c'mon bud, let's get you in the shower."

Thus starts the long arduous process of getting Sam healthy, getting him back into his routine, getting him to believe in himself again. It's not an easy process, it wasn't last time either, and if Sam finds his guns and knives taken from his room and stored in the impala instead, well he never says anything. He has Dean, helping him to the bathroom, then the couch, and he has Cas, making him broth to eat and curling up with Sam, resting his head on Sam's shoulder. In the morning Cas will take a short walk outside with Sam, and Dean will have a healthy light breakfast waiting when they get back.

It's not a solution. It never was. Just a way to manage it, to keep fighting it, and Cas and Dean will make sure that Sam always keeps fighting.

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me on tumblr! morecuddlzpleaz.tumblr.com


End file.
